I recently visited a city called Wuppertal in central Germany. It’s not your typical tourist destination, but I had my sights set on a particular, admittedly very nerdy, goal: I wanted to ride on the ‘Schwebebahn’, the oldest suspension railway in the world. This truly odd and unique structure was completed in 1901 and is still used today for local public transport… and from my first glimpse, I was charmed. Not only does the railway have an extremely historic “steampunk” vibe, it winds through a city that retains other remnants from that period – rustic old brick factories, billboards in archaic fonts, steel bridges, Art Deco stations.
The whole experience also made me reflect on the moment 6 years ago when I first heard about Wuppertal, which was also, not-so-coincidentally, the first time I fully grasped what steampunk is and why it exists.
Before then, I knew the basic definition of the genre, which Oxford Languages currently supplies as:
- a genre of science fiction that has a historical setting and typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.
- a style of design and fashion that combines historical elements with anachronistic technological features inspired by science fiction.
I also recognised the aesthetics and elements steampunk entails. What I didn’t really understand was why enough writers and artists had imagined this alternative steam-powered future for there to be a whole genre based on it.
Why were people writing these anachronistic fantastical futures filled with cogs and wheels, hot air balloons, zeppelins, and bronze machinery? Why revel in the ‘tech’ of the 1800s and early 1900s and imagine worlds that maintained it? Why focus on a turn-of-the-century aesthetic, as opposed to say, any other period in history?
Continue reading
